Christian fundamentalism and the left

By Ray Pingree, 6/5/2008

This article uses a new statistical tool to map out differences in political space for different groups of people. The animated, interactive maps you are about to see are based entirely on statistics, not on anyone's preconceived notions about the shape of political space. In this case, they suggest that the political left may be missing a chance to appeal to Christian fundamentalists who are not currently interested in political campaigns.

Although we normally think of Christian fundamentalism associated with the political right, this may be more a matter of which side has made better efforts to mobilize these people than any inherent compatibility with conservative ideology. We can see this by splitting our map of political space into two different versions based on interest in political campaigns. The high interest map confirms conventional wisdom, placing Christian fundamentalism (represented by the attitude "the bible is the word of god") solidly within the right. However, for people who are less interested in political campaigns, the shape of political space is dramatically different.

Click here to see it (CorrExplore must be installed first), and then switch back and forth between the high and low interest maps by pressing control+tab (or clicking on the tabs at the top of the screen). This file is a saved view from CorrExplore's NES 2004 built-in demo data.

You can see right away that fundamentalism loses literally all of its positive ties to the right for people with low political interest, and even gains a negative relationship with one attitude on the right - that the government should let people get ahead on their own. It is also positively related to certain attitudes on the left (social security and government aid to the poor). Despite some strong negative relationships with left attitudes related to abortion, environmentalism, and possibly militarism, it is closer to being a part of the left than the right. If you hide these (with a right click), it aligns with the left.

A cynic might say none of this matters because people who aren't interested in campaigns aren't going to vote anyway. However, it's also possible that these people are not interested precisely because the left has failed to reach out to them properly. The political mobilization efforts directed at fundamentalists are almost entirely from the right.

This map suggests that the left might be able to bring in a whole new group of voters by targeting them with the right kinds of messages. It also offers clues about how to do this. One example would be to emphasize programs such as government aid to the poor and social security as moral imperatives, while avoiding issues of abortion, the environment, and the use of military force.

It is of course difficult to get political messages through to those who are not interested in political campaigns. However, a closer look at our map suggests that local TV news may be of some use. As this view seems to suggest, high local TV news use generates a pattern similar to low campaign interest in terms of the role of Christian fundamentalism.

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